The lessening of tensions with the Soviet Union has led many in Congress and elsewhere to suggest that the United States cut its troop strength in the Pacific as well as in Europe. But the Soviet navy is not the only threat to peace in the Pacific, and some strategists worry that reducing the U.S. military presence could actually increase the likelihood of conflict in the region.

The fundamental political changes taking place in Eastern Europe have led to changes on the other side of the globe as well—in the Pacific Rim, an area also of great concern to the United States. While the Soviet army is pulling out of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, so, too, the huge Soviet Pacific fleet is spending less time on the waves and more time in port. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has said he plans to make large cuts in the fleet and has indicated he is interested in resolving regional tensions in the Pacific.

These developments in the Pacific Rim clearly have not received the kind of attention given to events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. “Mikhail Gorbachev's dramatic diplomacy has transformed Europe and transfixed Americans. … [H]e has also started breaking the Cold War ice in the Far East,” observes a recent editorial in The New York Times. “But President Bush acts as if there's nothing new on the Pacific horizon.”